Lost in Pattaya (9 page)

My lawyer was Singaporean, and hence I
trusted him, leaving even banking passwords with him, with a balance of sums
that he could cash and manage while I was away.

The sapling-thought was not about suicide,
which was just a constant companion, like a meaningless friend who keeps
clawing and rummaging at his own crotch, just empty in useless nose-digging
companionship.

The germinal, it was planted on the path of
finding Li Ya, whom I did, but in a manner that left me far more depleted with
her than I was without her.

My attack of hearts, literally, lay ahead
in the hands of Miho and her mistress Thuy Binh.

Part 2

Pictures of Li Ya

My plan, the one I
obsessed over, was simple. In the rubble of dead flesh and wasted youth, I
would pose as a client seeking child prostitutes, working through the pile of
girl-children till I stumbled upon Li Ya, my own flesh.

When I landed in
Pattaya, first off I saw Sri Jaya, scored, shot up, and had him put me in the
same whore house which had soothed me on that first night following the loss. I
asked for the same prostitute by name, and did not emerge from the brothel for a
week except for a walk each evening when she took me out to the little Buddhist
temple at the end of the street. I squared my bills in cash each day from the
ATM right next to Buddha and that kept the pimp’s attention away from me, till
on day-eight I declared to the whore, kneeling in front of her Lord- “I am
bored.”

A one, to whom all
pray and beg, has to get lonely, like the pimp queen and her muse Miho, who lay
only hours ahead now.

“I have not come
all this way to enjoy what I can get anywhere in the world,” was the summary of
my soft-spoken complaint.

“What else do you
want, you have to just let us know and we will help you get what you want,” the
prostitute assumed that I was looking for the variety of substance beyond the
pot, coke and alcohol that they had on offer. “Heroin? Crack? Pill? Mandrax?
Charas? Hashish? Psychotrop?” she asked, smiling right there, besides her
temple.

My request which
followed, one of debauched sexual gratification, she could never have guessed.
I had been straight and simple with her, not asking once for her to get down on
her knees.

“No no, if
anything I want to get off the drugs. I am looking for younger love, love from
a virgin,” I said, my eyes lowering in the hidden shame of my request, as I
picked the seeds out of the weed I was threshing meaninglessly in my palms,
becoming clumsy with the voicing of the
solution-sapling
. Unlike the
dead weed seeds in my hand, the plot I hatched began to grow.

Hatching a plan,
till it is thought to perfection is supremely easy. Acting upon it, I found it
shameful, left fumbling, now that the thought had been emitted from my mouth,
and in the words written here for you to enjoy. She noticed my inability at the
conversion of a cigarette into a simple joint and took the reefer from its eventual
contents, rolling with steady hands, wetting the joint with her saliva in
gentle licks from her raspy-soft pink tongue, eventually lighting up, extending
the joint gently my way, like an offering to her God, smoke curling away from a
stick of incensed narcotic.

She taught me,
making joints should be an extended prelude to smoking them.

“You mean a young
girl or a virgin? Virgins are a bit messy, and not that enjoyable. That is what
we advise our clients,” she added.

“Why so?” I asked,
wanting to extend conversation, not that I did not know why.

“Well, they are
scared and often not very compliant. The crying and the weeping can be a bit of
a turnoff. You don’t seem the type for that kind of thing. Young girls, I can
understand and help you with, so your holiday is made livelier than with an
older woman like me,” she smiled all the while. There was no hint of her having
felt rejected or discarded by me; she was seasoned, simply a whore, happy with
the week of steady employment behind her. “In fact, if you want a young thing
for a few extended weeks or more, we can arrange that too.”

The prostitute,
she was perfect, like a Goddess for a God she found each week.

Back in the room,
she left me by myself, returning with large photo albums.

“Here, take a look
if you like anything,” she handed the portfolio of nymph-prostitutes my way.

I checked the
tremble to my fingers as I opened the album, dreading the picture of Li Ya that
may stare back up at me. Inside, was a neat alluring arrangement of prints, one
on each page, annotated with nationality, spoken languages . . . lies for the
tourist to study and pick off the menu. Most poses were ordinary, meant to
showcase detail that draws attention of a male connoisseur. A few appealed to
an audience, dressed in leather and chains, and, a very few were in school
dresses, with buttons of the uniform blouses undone till the navel. I dwelt on
one such school dressed girl, just momentarily, but long enough for my
attendant prostitute to notice. “She is nice, very young, do you want to see
her?”

In time, I became
the richest man in the Bangkok and all women attended to me in prostitution,
whether they liked it or not. The winning and the ruling, it was in my
restrained reaping.

“Maybe tomorrow,”
I answered, kneeling before snorting the line of powder white that she always
laid out for me after our temple visits.

On the following
evening, I moved brothels, waiting for the school dressed girl I had chosen
from the catalogue. While waiting, I was comfortably stoned, the new room being
not very different from the one I had vacated.

The promise in the
photograph was not inaccurate. When the young prostitute was brought to me, she
was in the same school dress which had been used for the catalogue. I imagined
a large wardrobe of school dresses, arranged neat in ascending sizes, making
them useful over and over again, on objects including grown up women. The dress
was blue and seemed to melt like molten wax on her firm pink-white body,
turning to a white paraffin river, streaks of blue flowing over her body. It
had been a week since I had landed in Pattaya, and unsurprisingly the cocaine
began to speak to me, whispering was more like it. I made a mental note of
abstinence. From tomorrow, I would seek out the beach and a stretch that was suitable
for running, before checking into a hotel, ensuring it had a gym-room I could
use each day.

Another talk, of
me with my failed self.

When we were by
ourselves, she undid her school shirt well below her navel, and blurted
playfully, “Can I have some of your coke,” she had spotted the white powder
remnants on the table, and more revealingly, the bath-robed tension-twitch of
her customer.

She was Asian,
strangely well endowed, a lithe body running down and away from a flood of
breasts above, built for the purpose she served, derivation of sexual pleasure.
On purely sexual grounds, this was a major elevation from the relatively mature
prostitute with whom I had spent the last week.

She was not mine;
the young one, and neither was she mine to be.

“Sure,” I threw a
little white packet of pleasure at her, my own high imagining her rubbing the
drug in her crack, from where too absorption into the stream of blood is made
possible.

“Do you have a
credit card?” she asked, checking if her nasal-ways were blocked, her thumb
pressing against her nostrils, one at a time, determining which passage may
offer the strongest gale for insufflations.

“Yes,” I handed
her a cancelled one, to separate the lines. She snorted straight up, right
nostril pressed to the pedestal glass top table without any currency notes or
cutaway straws helping direct the drug brain-wards. She was a seasoned narcotic
partaker; I could tell by the way she rubbed the remaining coke into her gums,
leaving the table top glass clean, like a whistle. She eased back, resting on
the bed post, her hands stuffing her short blue skirt between her thighs, naked
knees jutting upwards like soft silken flags.

“Now what?” she
opened her eyes in about ten seconds, smiling. “Why did you pay for me for the
night? I know you cannot go on all night old man.”

“Do you like
music,” I asked, sensing that it would be a treat for the young, those who had
not stoned in days.

“Yes,” she, jumped
spring-like on the floor, “What do you have?”

“David Bowie,” I
said.

“Is that the name
of your stereo?” she asked.

“No, it is the
name of my singer, it is the only one I have on my laptop,” I said, connecting
the speaker to the PC after it booted up; the minutes in between were boredom
enough for us to shoot up again.

“Do you have
Justin Bieber?” she asked, a bit calmer after the boot-up, her eyes shot with
blood, seeking the refuge of rock and roll.

“No, but if you
want we can download him,” I said.

“Can you please,
please please,” she moved towards the phone in the room, asking for the wireless
password, rushing to my PC, before getting online.

Baby,
Baby…

I did not mind it,
since I too was getting progressively high. The brothel manager came knocking,
leaving, after collecting the broadband tariff.

She danced with
her shirt completely undone. Beads of sweat were soon flicking off her
forehead, frenzied hips throwing her skirt high in the air. She tore off her
shirt and danced into the crescendo of the song.

Then she lay
besides me, in the vacant silence between songs, topless, reducing the volume
and dimming down lights, allowing me to play David Bowie, the gold of her
pubescent breasts still heaving in the exertion of her silly dance.

“How old are you?”

“As old as you
want me to be?” she asked, jamming one palm between her skirted thighs, squeezing
with the force of rubbing legs, while the other palm landed gently over her own
breasts, caressing mounds.

This
is
Major
Tom
to
ground
control;
I’m
stepping
through
the
door.
And
I’m
floating
in
a
most
peculiar
way.

Rock music came
belting out of my stereo. “Do you get high every day?” I asked.

“No, in fact very
rarely, that too only pot; coke is a treat like the moon,” she said.

“Do you come
often, when you are with customers?”

“No, except when I
am on coke,” she said. “What do you want to do, oral, anal, in my tits,
missionary, doggy, yogic what would you like?” she asked quite directly.

“You don’t talk
like a teenager, come on tell me how old are you?” I asked again, aroused, yet
determined not to have sex with a kid.

My guess, she was
anywhere between sixteen and nineteen.

“I am as old as
the pimp told you,” she said. “Come on let us get on with it. Just fuck me and
do what you imagined you want to do,” she started to undo my shirt.

Why did she want
to get on with it?

Because, if she
satisfied me, then her age would not matter, meaning I would have no reason to
fuss over payments, not that I intended to, just that her experience taught her
not to leave sexually dissatisfied customers, it was bad business and tarred
her reputation.

“Wait, I need to
visit the toilet,” I left, and masturbated in the toilet, dwelling on acts that
she had suggested earlier, ridding myself of the pressure that temptation
built.

“Do you want to
eat, are you hungry?” I asked, after I emerged, knowing that within the hour the
coke would lead back to the territory of sexual craving. If she remained with
me, naked and comely, it could be quicker than the hour.

“Yes,” she jumped
with glee and picked up the phone again. She ordered sandwiches and ice-cream,
which arrived in about ten minutes.

She ate by
herself, devouring mindlessly with no care for the calories or fat that she
consumed.

My appetite had
been killed by the coke, a week ago. “Is it Ok if we just spoke for a while
first?” I asked.

She stopped
eating, threw the half eaten sandwich back on to the plate and looked up. “Look
I don’t like this kind of thing. You will talk and then you will say you want a
refund since you did not have sex. Come on, I can make you happy,” she thrust
her index finger into her mouth, licking clean the mayonnaise from her
sandwich.

“I am not going to
ask for a refund, if you want you can have your tips in advance,” I reached for
my wallet and gave her a ten dollar leaf.

“Okay, but I have
one condition. We can talk for an hour and if by then you decide not to do
anything, I will leave, at least I can have my regular customers and make some
more money tonight. OK?” she asked, grabbing the note before returning to her
meal.

“But, I paid for
the entire night,” I protested, mildly.

“Hey Mister, if you
don’t want to do anything, just go to bed and let me go. I can earn a bit more
that way,” she said.

Slut, it was
pointless reasoning with her, and in any case, the hour would be enough to seek
what I lost.

“Since when have
you been in the trade?” all the while I held my wallet, waiting for the moment
to whip Li Ya’s image out, asking if she had seen her.

“A few years.”

“Why do you want
to do this? Why don’t you seek a better life?”

“Yes, I will go
back to my village in Vietnam in about ten years and there I can live like a
Queen of the grocery store I will buy. My agent paid a large sum to my uncle
before shipping me here, so I have to pay back his charges and then save for
the future before I can quit.”